Behind the Scenes: Another Country

Another Country takes the story of my ancestors and places it firmly in the realms of fiction. At some point the characters became my own, and their stories veered from what actually happened in the past. None of my family, for instance, emigrated to Boston, and I did not have a distant relative involved in ether experiments or counterfeit rings.

This book was really inspired by how much was going on in America in the 1830s, a time I knew very little about before starting my research. This period of history was marked by rapid and sometimes dangerous growth--as evidenced by the many counterfeiting rings in operation. Boston was a bustling city, yet there were still cows grazing on the Common. Four thousand pianos were sold in the city in one year, and yet men still carried firearms. It is a fascinating time of contradictions, of change and resistance to change, of innovation and exploration and danger. I loved putting my characters into all that, and letting them take their imagined place in history.